I decided to start this thread to see if there are other F1 fans on this board. (Plus despite living nearly 20 years in this country, I don't think I'll ever get into NASCAR or similar types of oval racing).

I totally grew up watching F1 (ever since late 70s). Three reasons:- Tyrrell 6-wheeler was the coolest car ever made- All cars looked like cigarette boxes (Lotus JPS , Marlboro McLaren ) - which was so "adult" for a <10 year old kid.- Niki Lauda looked like Fantomas (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058089/combined )Anyway, I'll start with the non-F1 video - Robert Kubica trying to bet back into racing following the horrific 2011 crash. Portuguese Rally WRC (BTW, another totally badass racing series). Here is the result:

So I got into F1 during the 80-81 timeframe when I was about 7-8 years old. My mom worked with a doctor who owned several shiny red Italian things, and he took great delight in showing them off to interested children like myself. Back then, we only had maybe four races a year on TV. Shoot, the Indy 500 wasn't even broadcast live in its entirety until the mid-late 80s; we'd have ABCs Wide World Of Sports intercutting Indy and the Monaco GP with each other as if they were taking place concurrently. As such, I gravitated towards CART/Indycar because that's what we had coverage of here. I still consider that series to have been the pinnacle of open wheel competitiveness, and it depresses me greatly to have been involved in the sport during its declining years. That said, I was pleased to have been at every Long Beach GP between 1998 and 2008 (minus 2001) and that I haven't been to a single one since the Crapwagons have appeared.

I can still picture my apartment living room where I was laying on the couch when ESPN broadcast that Ayrton Senna had died. Every May 1, I'm saddened all over again.

You can guess my team allegiance by my screen name, but I was never a fan of Schumacher and Todt. (Ross Brawn, however, is teh awesome sauce) That said, I have a wonderful memory of watching the 2000 Japanese GP at Yankee Doodle's on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica and hugging and kissing several Ferrari fans at the conclusion after watching the race amidst a bar full of Lakers fans. Today, I remain an unabashed Alonso supporter and think der Seb has no idea what sort of damage he's done to his team. I also really like Mark Webber, but that's like 90% down to the fact that he has a Rhodesian ridgeback.

I've seen GP historics several times, but sadly not when I was in possession of anything like a decent camera. But I will say this; the first time I saw - and heard - the Ferrari 312T at speed on Shoreline Drive in Long Beach, I actually teared up. It was a restored Villeneuve car, and was the first F1 machine that I ever knew anything about.

Are people making a bigger deal of this Webber/Vettel thing than they really need to be? It's not the first time they've clashed, probably won't be the last, and yet the F1 media is treating this like it's the end of Red Bull. I don't really get it.

EDIT: Welp, no one can blame Vettel for what happened to Webber in this race

MRandall25 wrote:Are people making a bigger deal of this Webber/Vettel thing than they really need to be? It's not the first time they've clashed, probably won't be the last, and yet the F1 media is treating this like it's the end of Red Bull. I don't really get it.

EDIT: Welp, no one can blame Vettel for what happened to Webber in this race

It's actually quite a big deal. The damage this sort of fracas causes to the internal team dynamic is difficult to quantify; teams are already sort of running as a couplet of two mini-teams (Driver A and Driver B, each with their own phalanx of mechanics and engineers pulling for 'their' car and driver to come P1), and a dust up between team mates of this magnitude just serves to fracture that divide. I highly recommend the website Formula1Blog.com and their weekly podcasts. And a couple weeks ago they had a special podcast with Marc Priestley, a long time McLaren engineer. Priestley was at Macca in 2007 when the fight between Alonso and Hamilton blew up, and he said that the knock on effect was utterly disastrous on team morale.

One thing that deserves universal derision, imo, is how Christian Horner 'handled' things. "Come on, Seb. This is silly." Contrast that with Ross Brawn explaining - clearly - why Rosberg was to hold station, and Monaco 2007 when Ron Dennis got on the blower to tell Hamilton to quit racing Alonso. The main takeaway from Malaysia 2013 is that Horner isn't actually the team boss at RBR. Not that I ever really thought he was the main man -- that's Helmut Marko. But Christian's job it to attend all the dreary meetings and whatnot. Anything involving Vettel is Mr. Marko's job. And since Vettel hasn't been so much as scolded by the team...... I guess it wasn't silly.

MRandall25 wrote:They've had their share of problems in the past and nothing's really come of it, from what I understand. Why would the dynamic change because of 1 race?

I think there are "problems" and there are "PROBLEMS". Racing ahead of the race leader who slowed down to comply with the team's instructions, and consequently depriving him of sure victory qualifies for the latter, IMO.

That being said, the incident surely raised my personal interest in following this season. I always enjoy watching the races more if I can root for or against somebody. These days, I don't have anybody to root for, but luckily Vettel took the place Michael Schumacher occupied until recently.

I was a big fan of open-wheel racing when I was younger, particularly IndyCar/CART. I drove up to the race in Cleveland when I was in high school. Then that complete ******** Tony George (who I hope dies horribly of some awful form of butt cancer) created the IRL after the CART board of directors refused to hand the series over to him, and in the process he functionally ruined American open-wheel racing. That basically turned me off of the whole sport, and my interest has never really rekindled. Plus, Schumacher was ascendant in F1 right around that time, and I hate his guts, so that also turned me off F1 too. Schumacher should have been disqualified for intentionally wrecking Damon Hill at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix. I’ve detested him ever since.

MRandall25 wrote:They've had their share of problems in the past and nothing's really come of it, from what I understand. Why would the dynamic change because of 1 race?

Because in the past, the person doing the stupid thing has been the only one negatively impacted. (For example, when Vettel tried to overtake Webber in Turkey a couple years ago and merged into him and took himself out of the race) This Malaysian incident is different also because Vettel was ignoring an express order from the team to dial it back and hold station. If the result had stood the way it was intended, they both would have left Sepang tied with 33 points, but Webber would have been the championship leader by dint of having a race win.

And let's face it; the team were simply not all there this weekend in China..... and, ironically, all the missteps seemed to happen on Webber's car. Hmm.

Shyster wrote:Schumacher should have been disqualified for intentionally wrecking Damon Hill at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix. I’ve detested him ever since.

I've always felt that Hill went for a gap that simply didn't exist. And if you watch the on-board, Michael never really checks his mirrors or anything, he simply turns in normally. A cardinal rule of racing is that if you are not 100% fully alongside the driver you are trying to overtake - as in front wheel-to-front wheel - at the time of normal turn-in to the apex, it's not your corner, and you are obligated to back out and yield. Contrast that with what Webber did in China on Sunday; the only difference between that incident and HIL-SCH in Adelaide is that Webber managed to get a couple feet further up the inside.

In normal circumstances it doesn't do the driver on the outside in those situations any good to simply allow the overtaking driver to hit them and then b**ch about it after the race. That said, a title decider isn't what I'd call 'normal circumstances'.

MRandall25 wrote:And Vettel may be a jag, but it's hard to deny the driving talent he has. Hamilton got lucky there wasn't 1 more lap.

I truly don't think it would have been a big deal if there hadn't been numerous races in the past few years where Webber was clearly the faster car, and team orders had him stay behind Vettel. Webber followed team orders... Vettel is a selfish little p$&#*.

Personally, I enjoyed the heck out of Vettel being shut out of a podium finish.

MRandall25 wrote:And Vettel may be a jag, but it's hard to deny the driving talent he has. Hamilton got lucky there wasn't 1 more lap.

I truly don't think it would have been a big deal if there hadn't been numerous races in the past few years where Webber was clearly the faster car, and team orders had him stay behind Vettel. Webber followed team orders... Vettel is a selfish little p$&#*.

Personally, I enjoyed the heck out of Vettel being shut out of a podium finish.

I thought he was going to run out of tire about a lap and a half sooner than he did. When they started the final tour and he was down to a 1-sec gap I thought, "Holy crap, the little effer might do this." Then he slid wide at T12 - both entry and exit - and I laughed a little.

How dominant has Vettel been this year, though? The race at Spa was probably my 2nd favorite (after Monaco) just because of Eau Rouge and the speed at which they took half of the corners. Made for very exciting racing (albeit not a very exciting result, since Vettel was miles ahead).

I've seen 0 F1 races since they left SPEED channel. Usually they were watchable in passing while waiting for NASCAR Race Day on Sunday morning. Open wheel - the race I remember best was the Danny Sullivan Indy 500 win (think I was 10 at the time). I was already a NASCAR fan by this point, but it wasn't on much at our house - it wasn't until the mid-late 90s I got my dad turned over to NASCAR. The IRL-CART schism didn't help open wheel any here.

I watched pieces of the Belgian Grand Prix, and it's the first time I've watched any F1 for a long time. While I won't defend the quality or the marketing of IndyCar, it's what I grew up with here in Indiana and it gets all the attention now. It's easy to forget that I live in what has to be the only state in the US where open wheel gets about 10% of the discussion time on summer sports radio, and NASCAR is rarely mentioned except for the weekend when they are in town.